• • Sunset: Heroes of the Milky Way
• December 22, 2024

Sunset: Heroes of the Milky Way (Chapter 12)

Alloya Ra’non

Race to the Sun

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The elevator opens to the leftovers of a battle. Sometimes I wish I was like Hideo, without the able to really see carnage. I don’t think he sees how depressing things can be.

The lab is mostly destroyed, with a few are collecting bodies and lining them up in tarps. I look up at what I assume to be the Shatter Drive. Thankfully, it looks intact and seemingly undamaged at least. 

Commander Starden walks around me, done gathering himself from our fast flight. “We should find Dr. Challan. I imagine he’s organizing this if he’s still alive.” 

I nod my head in agreement. 

Starden leads me through the lab, between what’s left of who knows how many broken projects, potentially months or even years of work down the drain. I imagine that recorded data can’t make up for the time it takes to gather the necessary materials and actually construct things.

Eventually, I can see this large, pure-white furred Lupian zipping up a wide body bag. I ask Starden, “What’s a Lupian doing here?”

“He was taken here before the incident with the Dion. That’s also who we’re looking for, Dr. Challan,” he explains. 

We walk up to Challan as he looks down at one body bag, his arms crossed and one finger holding up his chin. He lifts his gaze when we got close.

“Commander,” the Lupian spoke softly.

“Dr. Challan, it’s good to see you’re alive and intact,” Starden greets him in turn, “what’s the situation here?”

Challan sighs and inform us, “I’ve had all those who survived the attack start lining up our own on the side over there. Some are taking the opportunity to go to the morgue to get body bags. Most of the prototypes were destroyed but nothing important. The Shatter Drive we were building is unharmed, as if the soldiers realized the danger of shooting a large core.”

“What about the Guardians that were here?” I interject. “A Human, and a Regamorph girl?”

Challan turns around and points up to the left. In voice quite gloomy, “They were there when we fighting. We heard a loud boom and have no way to get up there. The elevator’s shot.”   

“Thank you,” I say before I turn around about to take off. I need to find out what happened. Was the boom caused by Clay? The blast couldn’t have left a hole in the hull or Aleti would have been sucked out. 

Starden grabs my arm to stop me as I begin lifting off. “Let me go with you,” he says. I don’t know why he insists on going, Starden better not being expecting to comfort me. Still, I hook my hand underneath his shoulder and lift him up as I fly towards the elevator. 

I get to the elevator and kick down the door, letting it shatter inwards down the elevator shaft. It’s only a matterof seconds before I’ve flown us up to where we need to be but it doesn’t feel like it. The worst downside to have superspeed is that you truly learn just how long a second can be.

I lift Starden and tell him to wrap his arms around my neck. With both arms free I stick my fingers between the lining of the elevator doors and pry them apart. I fly through and I look around to find that this smaller lab has been torn apart.

It gets worse the closer we get to the other side of the room. There’s a recently sealed hole with debris crammed into it. As if something popped a hole into space and everything got sucked in at once and plugged the hole just as emergency sealant was trying to seal it shut.. 

That isn’t the shocking part though. The whole wall opposite from us is scorched black, shaped like an asteroid hit it. Much more chaotic than Clay’s powers usually are, which worries me. Then as I look down, the black ash on the wall gets smaller in width, as if it had come from a specific point. A path forms from the wall to the floor and then disappears under a pile of several crashed desks. 

I’m get to the pile in less than a second, and thoughtlessly drop Starden to start throwing the desks to the side. Then the wood moves a little from something underneath. Then comes a groan. I dig through everything faster. 

“Come on, get out of my way,” I grunt I dig my hands into the pile searching for someone. I feel my hand touch skin and I freeze for a second. Then I twist my hand and grasp an arm. I search with my other hand and find a limb on the other side. 

I let my cosmic energy emit from me and flow over whoever I’m grabbing, coating them in a protect shield before I pull them from the debris. 

Then with a tug, my daughter is in my arms. 

“Aleti,” I gasp as I hug her so close, yet holding her like a doll. The urge to crush her against me is strong but I can’t, I have to be careful to not hurt her. After everything that she must have been through, it would only take a lapse in control for her own mother to take her out. 

Enough of the self-developed nightmares. Aleti is breathing, Aleit is alive.

I then start looking her over. The blue gear she wore, a heavier version of mine, is in tatters, but where cuts should be… Aleti shows nothing, not a single wound of any kind. Not even a sign of something internal… 

I bring my hand to her face. There is a blue blotch on her cheek. I bring my thumb to it, and when I wipe it off there is no wound for it to have come from. She has no wounds on her at all, is this someone else’s blood? 

How she is completely unharmed, I don’t know, but it’s hard not to focus on it. 

“Alloya!” I hear Starden yell out to me. The concern in his voice is palapable. I turn around and find him struggling to move a large desk, half broken on its side. I see blood on the palms of his hands, red blood… like a Human’s. 

I pick Aleti up by her shoulder and legs so we can get moving. I hear her groan, and murmur something unintelligible as I move towards Starden and see what’s wrong.

“Oh no,” I gasp, “Starden, clear this table so I can put her down.” He stops trying to move the desk and moves to a table with half its base broken. It’s slanted but with nothing atop of it. I rest Aleti up against it. I then move the desk he was trying to move to toss it across the room.

There Clay lays bleeding out, a hole in his chest, his face unmoving.  

I kneel down besides him, and lay my hands on his jacket to tear it open and the shirt underneath. I look at his chest to get a better look at his large wound. I feel around, trying to remember where his heart would be and find a vein. I find a faint pulse which means he’s alive, but just barely. That feeling I had earlier, was it him dying? If he was dying I should have felt it continuously, why don’t I feel him now?

I lean closer and I inspect the hole in Clay’s chest. There are burns, with some blue-green residue. He was attacked with cosmic energy, he was probably attacked by one of those armored soldiers. Maybe the hole was caused by his own attack losing control and backfiring on him, which would explain the scorched wall and laboratory, but not the residue. Then the other question is why isn’t he healing?

Cosmic energy isn’t something he would heal from naturally, I’ve checked, but wouldn’t his demon give him the power to fix himself?

“I need…” I hear in a whisper. I look back up to his face, and I see his lips twitch. I bring my head down, and lean my ear next to his lips.

“What do you need Clay?” I ask softly.

“Away…” he continues. “She’s… she’s killing… need… away….. away…. away…” As he tries to speak he begins to cough. I turn my head and hold my face close. He coughs blood in my face.

“Is he gonna make it?” I hear Starden ask behind me.

“I don’t know,” I ramble anxiously. “He should be healing, his demon should be helping him. I don’t know what’s wrong. He justs keeps trying to say something about being away.” 

I finish talking and think to myself. What did Clay want? How do I save him?

‘Use your head you moron, use his power to heal him,’ I hear Rega chime, setting off alarms in my brain.

How are you speaking to me right now so clearly? Clay’s right here.

‘How should I know?’

Rega could be lying but usually I can sense something to tell me that for sure. ‘I don’t feel Sera. It’s like she’s being pushed back by something more than me. Her power itself has receded along with her conscious.’ 

I haven’t heard of something like this before.

No time to waste thinking about it though. Rega said to heal Clay based on his powers, so he could be healed by sunlight.

‘It’s going to take much more than just sunlight. He’s on a door I wouldn’t knock on.’ 

Your gloom and doom isn’t helping.

‘Throw him into the sun.’ 

That seems quite extreme.

That would overload him, I remind Rega.

‘Maybe, he’s dead either way, what do you have to lose? Then again, it would be nice to see him blow up in your face.’ 

I scoop Clay up in my arms by his shoulders. I rest his face close to my chest, being parallel is much better for flying as fast as we need to. 

I turn my head back to ask Starden, “Where’s the nearest airlock?” 

He points back to the lab and says, “Back through the center to the dock. We don’t keep too many around.” That’ll take too long, and Hideo should be cleaning house about now too. 

I can use an elevator shaft. I stand up and start flying. 

I tell Starden, “Stay with Aleti,” then I’m gone through the elevator door from which I came then I start flying up. 

I lean over Clay and we go straight through it the elevator above us without a scratch. After that I have a straight shot into space.

Now I can fly as fast as I can without breaking the sound barrier, which would not be a good idea in a tight space. Before we get really close to the ceiling, I generate a coat of energy around us to keep Clay from being hurt from any backdraft while we’re flying. 

Then in seconds we hit the ceiling.

There isn’t an explosion, only a fast and loud scrape as a piece of metal flies off a small section of Noland’s surface. I don’t stay long enough to look around as I then kick into high gear, fueling myself with more energy and taking my speed up a notch. In a second I break the sound barrier, flying far and away from the Noland installation, and then increasing it further as I around the bend of Apoderus. 

I increase my cosmic shielding around Clay and I before going light speed. 

I rarely fly this fast. I’ve done it maybe a couple times in my life since I haven’t exactly practiced thinking at light speeds, let alone moving that fast. If the circumstances weren’t so dire and I wasn’t so focused, I would be amazed by what the planets and asteroids in my home solar system look like when you pass them by at light speed. 

Apoderus is the fourth planet from my system’s sun, but it still would take more than 40minutes to get from there to the sun at light speed. 

This means that I have to go even faster, something I haven’t done before out of fear. When you go this fast, you can’t see like you would before. I keep getting blinks and trace light waves that I’m flying into, but they’re warped from the fact that I’m getting incomplete images. The only thing that’s relatively visible is the sun, since I’m flying straight towards it.

It doesn’t look like the sun anymore, but a funnel fo fire that I’m flying through rather than towards.

It looks like I’m surrounded by fire, but I don’t feel anything resembling heat. Space is cold, even when moving this fast, and I start to feel numb. 

Time no longer seems to move the same either, it moves so slow, or fast, I can’t tell. As I get closer, the sun gets bigger and bigger in my vision, and clearer. The center of my vision is one stationary circle as the Sun takes up more and more space of that center. Eventually, all I see in front of me is light.

‘Wait, Alloya stop!’ Rega warns me suddenly. I try to bring myself to a screeching halt but it‘s too late.    

PLUME! 

I hit the sun.

My shielding starts to dissipate and I let Clay go. I immediately lose sight of him as my eyes are overloaded and I’m blind. The shielding over my skin is being burned away, and if I don’t want to be burned up by the sun, I need to change my cellular makeup.

I gather up more cosmic energy than usual, more than I have in a long time. It’s just pooling into me, the dark energy from outside and inbetween the elements that make up a star, all coming into me to be my fuel. I use it to replace my cells. Transforming from something solid, into a being of energy. My hands, my legs, my torso, my head, all turn into a woman of cosmic energy.  A shining blue-green woman.

A woman who still can’t see where she is. 

My transformation easily allows me to dodge or destroy anything. From this state I can easily form copious amounts of power to blast away planets or moons. Scientists suggested many times that I had enough energy to wipe out this entire solar system or to blow up the sun if I just let it all go. 

But none of that stops me from being blinder than Hideo. I bring my new hands to my face, to cover my eyes but that’s a useless endeavor. I’m inside the sun with no sense of direction. I’m not going to burn away, but I don’t know if I’m floating towards the center or the surface. I can’t do anything from where I am. 

Then hands grab my arms. That should be possible only for another being made out of energy. I struggle and try to pull away, but the hands let go and wrap around me. Then I feel myself being pushed, or carried away. Before I know it, I’m now moving extremely fast, and I can’t tell how much. I’m not flying so much being taken for a ride.

PLUME! 

As we exit the sun I try to grasp the one holding onto me. I stop struggling, and the hands quickly move back to my arms, not roughly but still powerfully. I open my eyes, but I’m still a bit blind. I barely make out the yellow figure shining before me. I see the outline of the hands on my arms.

Then we increase in speed, the speed of light, and I feel the world pass me by again for a moment, but only a moment so we don’t fly that far. Just far enough for me to see again.

I open my eyes and see a man of light, of energy like me floating in front of my eyes. He’s shining in my face, but he dims himself for me. Small solar flares, which never reach that far away from his skin, cover his surface. 

A true star man.

“You saved me,” he says. The voice is different from what I know, but I know it to be Clay’s.

“You would do the same for me,” I tell him, noticing the same change in my own voice.

He floats closer to me, much closer. He wraps an arm behind my waist to bring me close until our faces are touching. Our energies moving against each other. It’s a strange, buzzing sensation of being in these forms, and touching another. It’s soothing above all. 

“Here are my thanks,” Clay tells me and I know what he’s going to do. Our heads are level, so we both just tilt them to the side. 

Then he kisses me. It feels like no other kiss I’ve had before.

Terra’rork

We hear Hideo’s message and I have everyone move into the hallway. My ‘guards’, if innocent and untrained civilians can be called that, have their weapons aimed at the doorway.

Here’s where I realize we are lacking a door from Alloya’s earlier efforts. Hideo’s sound waves will reflect and deflect into here. I don’t want to bet on them losing their potency as they bounce down the hall. I’ve never been hit with one of Hideo’s sound waves before, and I have no desire of testing my metal against them, but I also have no intention of letting any of those in my care come to harm. You’d think it’d be a bigger conundrum.

I have roughly a few minutes to think of something, I make the decision to finish healing one more person after we all hear the message. That action may end up costing me in the long run. 

‘Just had to save one more, and now you can’t save anyone,’ the demon rubs in my face. 

I could die too, I point out to him.

‘Now you’re just putting yourself down. How are you ever going to know how well you can take a punch, if you never sit and take it?’ 

The demon’s metaphors are not making me feel at ease. Sometimes I feel like I have to search the walls of my skull to find meaning in what he’s saying. 

‘I’m not that metaphorical. Only sometimes when it can be most irritating.’ 

Maybe I can figure something out by what he said, about taking a hit.  

I look back up to the hallway and I notice how I barely fit in here. I close the gap asides for a few corners. Maybe I need to take a hit so others don’t. 

I move forward back into the center. This allows me to turn around and enter the door frame facing away from where the sound waves should come. I try then to spread out and take up as much room as possible, but even with my head leaned over my shoulders can’t reach the ceiling. Maybe I can spread out by trying to expand my body.

I relax everything and I stretch myself out. The edges and gaps where my solid form can’t defend against, my tissue moves in to cover up. Just in the nick of time I have the doorway blocked, and my back ready to protect against the incoming sound wave.

The people are moving back further and further as I do this, but they are not getting very far as they pull and drag along their injured. At least they didn’t abandon anyone. I’ve made that mistake before.

EYOW! 

I hear the wave right before it hits me. 

I don’t feel the effects through my eardrums, thankfully. My head is protected, but my back is still being slammed by the soundwaves. It puts severe strain on the muscle and tissue I have extended, wearing them thin. Imagine having an animal hit a net, but the animal keeps pushing it, stretching it out, the animal never tiring and the net is tearing. That is what is happening to my tissue and muscles. 

Panic sets in as the pain does with the thought that my body barrier will give and allow Hideo’s wave to break through, destroy my ears, and kill anyone nearby. I dare not waste the energy and concentration to look around. Hopefully, even if I fall the others will be safe.

Then the wave is gone. The attack is done. I hold myself up for what felt like a minute, but is probably only a few seconds just to make sure. Then I let myself stumble and collapse backwards with some of my tissue and muscles retracting back into my body, but not all of it. The parts that stay out are exposed to make contact with the ground, and it burns. The parts that were holding back the soundwave already feel sore, and now they only hurt more in another way. 

The people I am caring for are safe though, and now I can rest my eyes for a second. I lay there for what feels like anywhere between minutes and hours. Probably the former.

Suddenly I hear, ZUME! 

That sounds like the powering on of a blaster.

‘Fool, you’ve let your guard down,’ my demon chides me.

I open my eyes and this armored soldier is standing over me, a blaster pointed straight at my head. The charging sound seemed a lot farther away than he actually was. Maybe this is an effect of the sound wave.

“Well, this is a predicament,” I say to the armored man.

“All my friends are dead because of your rodent friend,” he says coldly.

He must mean Hideo. 

“Wait, that’s not true.” If I can hold his attention long enough, maybe someone can help me. “Waverites are not rodents, that is a common misconception. They are actually closer to primates, like Humans, or chilings.”

“Doesn’t. Matter.” He turns off the safety, strange it was ever on to begin with honestly. “Now, I’ll kill you, and it’ll make me feel better.” 

Then he pulls the trigger, and my life passes before my eyes.

BLAM! 

Then the gun explodes in his hands. 

“What the hell?!” he screams as he drops the gun. I then start laughing about the asinine amount of luck that I have. 

“What did you do?” the soldier demands to know.

“I didn’t do anything,” I admit. “Your weapon was probably destroyed by the soundwave. Gonna need something else to murder innocent people.”

Then he cocks his head and tears off his helmet. He’s a Regamorph, with sweat rolling down his face and into his light blue beard, slightly discoloring it to be darker. “You know what, I think I’ll just kill you with my hands.”

‘What? Is he gonna try and strangle rock?’ 

Not even my demon can figure out his strategy.

Then he moves on top of me by planting his knees on my shoulders. I am still too injured to move, let alone to lift my massive and heavy body back up. 

The Regamorph tells me, “Most don’t know this about Techanots, but if you stick your fingers where the rock from the neck meets the head…” 

As he says this he sticks his fingers right where he says. He digs in his fingers, causing an excruciating stabbing pain. I can feel a liquid pouring out of my body. 

“I hear that most Techanots haven’t ever seen their own blood. When you push out the body parts yourselves, you hold back your blood. You don’t mix it with someone else’s. It’s still rare for one to see the color.” 

As he says this he lifts his hand to my face, showing me a black and grey liquid wet on his hands. I can’t fight the urge. I start breathing erratically, almost hyperventilating, not from the pain, but because he’s right. 

I’ve never seen my own blood before. 

“This stuff though,” he says as he lets it drip over my face, “doesn’t bother me, I’m very familiar with it.”

I try to calm myself, distract my mind from the sight of my own blood. “Why are you doing this?!”

“Hmm? Are you asking about why I’m having my fun now? Or why me and my friends were killing everyone?” he asks gleefully, devious in tone and smile.

“Both! Why kill everyone? Why torture me? I just want to help people who just wanted to live in peace!”

Then he digs his fingers back into my neck, drawing much, much more blood, and I can’t restrain the painful howl in my throat. 

“I’m hurting you because I enjoy it. I’m killing everyone because I get paid to. I don’t ask questions, I just get to do what I love, with some people who share similar interests, but your friend killed all of those people.”

“The Regnorian Republic wants these people dead? They’re defenseless civilians- HURK!“ That’s the sound I make when he chokes me, by squeezing my neck with his fingers. 

“Who cares? Defenseless targets, are easy targets. Easy targets, well they’re just fun. I wasn’t picked for this job for any good reason, being a good soldier doesn’t mean you’ll listen when you’re told to do something everyone else would be reolvted by. I was picked because I would enjoy it, I would be upset if I was left out. That’s the secret behind the people under this helmet, and you get to know, because I’m going to kill you. 

“As to why we want to kill everyone here? Well, that’s your fault, I want you to know that. The government higher-ups want these witnesses dead, and when they found out you were here, well, they moved up the time table. They figured, throw in a couple cantorium suits, and we’ll rid ourselves of two problems at once!” 

I cough and my grey blood hit him in the face. His sadistic smile only grows larger. “You’ve been planning to kill these people?” I ask.

“It takes you a long time to catch on doesn’t it?” he mocks me. “This is why you’re going to die.”

“No, I just want the people behind you to hear that. It bothered me that people may think Team Sunset brought this attack on them. You just said otherwise,” I inform him. 

I try to smile a little bit then.

The Regamorph on top of me then loses his smile when he turns around, and sees the people who are now raising their weapons at him.

“Leave him alone!” 

He then tears out his right hand, causing me to scream in pain. “No, you back off! Now! Or I’ll crush his neck with my other hand. With this suit, you better believe that I can do it. I’ve already shown that I will.”

The people hesitate. It seems as if they came back for me. To say that doesn’t touch my heart would be a lie.

But still, as Guardian it is my job to protect them, not the other way around. I yell with blood in my mouth, “Just shoot! Don’t worry about me! Get him now while you- URK!” 

He squeezes again, signaling that he isn’t letting go and remains intent on closing my throat. I then begin to choke. Even though I don’t breath anything, fluids that gestate through the throat are now pooling up. Just because one doesn’t need air, doesn’t meant they can’t drown. My organs don’t want to be filled with my own blood.

“You, shut it!” he screams at me.

Any ideas? I think to my demon as I continue choking to death, but he doesn’t respond. I need help! Why aren’t you answering me? Please…Titrainan! Titrainan, please.

I know he doesn’t care much to help me, but if I die now… 

Does he want a new host? Not one of my kids, not Allis’rork, or Esse’took. They should not be cursed with this.

“Oh big mistake you made.” A familiar voice makes it all make sense.

Then with the speed of sound, Hideo perches himself on me and the sadistic armored soldiers arm, his own face inches from my torturer’s. “You messed with the big guy, very bad mistake, do you understand that?” The Regamorph soldier is scared out of his wits. “The very second, you decided to torture this good man here, you decided that you were ready to die. Now, we decide whether or not you die fast or slow.”

The Regamorph is frozen, even forgot to take a breath because he then inhales loudly and begins breathing similarly to how I was before. “I, I-”

“Am a dead man? Is that what you were going to say?” Hideo finishes for him. Then he gives the Regamorph his two ultimatums. “You know, scumbag, I heard what you said on the way here. You like causing people pain, you find it fun. 

“You see, I do too, when it’s people like you. For kinship sake I’ll kill you quickly if you let Terra go, as gentle as a breeze in summer. Try and take him with you, and you’ll be my plaything for as long as you last. 

“Choose, now.” 

I thank all that may be divine that Hideo likes me. 

The Regamorph is terrified to move. He won’t, can’t, because of fear, because he has an idea of the fate that awaits him. He’s been on the other side before, and he knows that he doesn’t want to go out the same way. I feel his grip around my throat loosen, and I feel his hand slowly come out from between my neck and head. 

When the armored soldier has completely freed me, and is incapable of harming me further, he lays his hands at his sides, and awaits death.

“Hehe,” Hideo giggles. Then breaking his word, he quickly flies up as he grasps the soldier’s shoulders with his feet, and begins to fly up and around. 

The soldier screams in terror, “You said it would be quick!” 

Hideo loops around and heads over to the edge of this floor. 

“I lied,” I hear him snicker before he nose dives and descends to the lower floors, the soldier’s screaming never fading away.

The people who had originally came to my rescue, three Regamorphs and another Techanot, rush to my side. The Techanot walks around to my head, and begins letting his own tissue and muscles fall onto me. He is slow though, obviously not an experienced doctor, but I can take over for him.

One young Regamorph woman lays a hand on my chest. “Sir,” she says, “you don’t ever have to worry about any of us blaming you for this. We… we know why we’re here.” 

Her voice is soft and calming. It soothes my nerves to hear her say that. 

“Thank young lady, and gentleman, hold off on my surgery for a moment,” I say right before coughing. 

The fellow Techanot stops what he was doing and reminds me that, “Why? Guardian, your neck is bleeding profusely. You need care immediately.”

I listen for the screams before speaking, finding them still audible even from so far away.

‘Hideo hasn’t even gotten started,’ Titrainan says, informing me of his return, and the far distance Hideo is from me.

I tell the group around me, “I know all that, but unless you want to hear the screaming and guttural cries that are about to come out of that soldier’s mouth, I suggest we find a way to move me.”